Free Horse Sense by Bonnie Bryant

until he was better. It was her responsibility.
    “Oh, Chad?” she said when her brother answered the phone. “Listen, I’m in a rush. There’s an emergency here at the stable. Tell Carole and Lisa that Nickel’s sick and I’ve got to stay here. I don’t knowwhen I’ll be home. I’m sorry, but they’ll understand. Bye.”
    She hung up quickly and headed back to Nickel’s stall.
    L ISA WALKED HAPPILY up the stone stairs that led to Stevie’s front door and rang the bell. She’d been able to buy four pins with her birthday money. There would be one for each member of The Saddle Club and one for the first new member they voted into the Club. And Lisa knew just who she thought that should be.
    Chad Lake opened the door. “Hi there, uh, Lisa. Come on in.”
    “Carole and Stevie here yet?” she asked, stepping through the doorway.
    “Well, not exactly,” Chad began uncomfortably. “Both of them called. I mean each of them called. But they didn’t know that the other wasn’t coming. Say, why don’t you come in anyway? I mean, I’m sure Stevie would want you to come in and anyway, if it had been me, I wouldn’t have missed a meeting with you.” He grinned warmly at her. Lisa was a little surprised by the way he was acting toward her, but she was more surprised by what her friends had done. Even from Chad’s slightly garbled message, it was clear that neither Stevie nor Carole was going to be able to make it to
this
meeting either.
    Furious, and shrugging off Chad’s offer of cookies, milk, or video games, she stomped back down thestairs, shoving The Club pins deep into her pants pocket.
    “They’ll see,” she muttered to herself as she turned toward home. “They’ll see.”
    She barely got the door to her own room closed before the hot tears began streaming down her cheeks.
    What had happened to The Saddle Club?

N OBODY EVER SAID Lisa Atwood wasn’t resourceful. She always managed to find a way to accomplish things—even when they seemed impossible. Lisa knew this about herself, but she was beginning to think that The Saddle Club would be her greatest challenge.
    She stopped crying after a few minutes. Then she sat sullenly on her bed, glaring out at space. She could have gone on doing that for a while, but Dolly scratched at her door. One look at that cute little face with its golden fur, and she couldn’t help smiling a little.
    She’d worked for hours and hours on the rules for the Club, just to make it a
real
club. Now that she’d accomplished that, it was beginning to look as if itdidn’t matter to Carole and Stevie what she did. In her orderly mind, the possibilities began slipping into place. If Carole and Stevie wanted out of the Club, she couldn’t stop them, and if they left, one of two things would happen: The Club would stop altogether, or—
or
it would continue only if there were other members.
    That had to be the answer. Lisa pulled the set of rules out of her desk drawer. Right there, Rule Four in the New Members section said that new members could be voted in at any Club meeting by a majority of the members present. Well, there
was
a Club meeting, right? Just because Carole and Stevie hadn’t shown up didn’t mean it wasn’t a Club meeting.
    Lisa decided it was time for formalities. “I’d like to propose a new member for The Saddle Club,” she said. Dolly’s ears perked up. She lifted her head from her paws and looked at Lisa. “I’d like to propose that we admit Estelle Duval.” Dolly put her head back down on her paws. “Is there any discussion?” Dolly blinked her eyes. “Shall we vote?” Lisa asked. “All in favor say ‘aye.’ ” She waited a few seconds and then voted in favor of Estelle’s admission to The Saddle Club. “All opposed?” There was no opposition. “Well, then, it’s settled,” Lisa told Dolly. “We now have four members in The Saddle Club.”
    She took out the four small pins she’d bought that afternoon and laid them in a line on